


A Feast Fit for Heroes

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Adorable Jester (Critical Role), Character Study, Developing Relationship, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Fluff, Food, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Jester & Caleb Widogast Friendship, Light Angst, Magic, Minor Fjord/Jester (Critical Role), Talking, Time Skips, minor spoilers for episode 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-05 05:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15163880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: When you're traveling with the same group of people for a while, it's important to get to know them. One by one as the weeks go by, Jester asks all her friends the same very important question - namely, "What is your favorite food?"Everyone has a different answer, and that gives her a lot to think about with regards to them and herself.But it's all for the sake of one day putting a very important plan into action.





	1. Yasha

Jester asked Yasha first. After all, you never knew how long Yasha was going to stick around for any questions, let alone this one.

“Yasha? What is your favorite food?”

It was a bright and sunny day as their cart rattled on down the road, pulled by three of the horses. Fjord, Yasha, and Jester rode the other three. Their pace was easy, however, barely above what the group might have managed walking on their own two feet. There was no rush. It was a nice day, Rexxentraum wasn’t going anywhere, and it wasn’t often that they actually got to travel on one of the larger roads anymore.

So Jester brought her horse alongside Yasha’s and took her chance.

Yasha looked over at Jester, eyebrows raised in polite curiosity. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious!” Jester said hastily, smiling her most charming smile. “And also making conversation on this long and boring trip.”

“Well, what’s _your_ favorite food?”

“I asked you first!”

Fortunately, Yasha didn’t put up any more of a struggle in the face of Jester’s very good point. Instead, she hummed thoughtfully, staring down at the back of her horse’s head as she, perhaps, reflected on her options. “I suppose…apples are nice. I like apples.”

“ _Really?_ ” Jester wrinkled her nose in disbelief. “I like apples, too, but they are not my favorite food ever!” She leaned around Yasha to try and catch Molly’s eye, but the tiefling was deep in conversation with Nott about something.

Yasha saw her looking. “If you’re going to ask Molly if I’m being serious, he’ll tell you that I am.” She sounded amused rather than scolding. “He used to help me go hunting for apples all the time. Whenever we passed by an orchard that…maybe didn’t have too many people watching it, we’d duck away for a little while to pick up what had fallen. We only ever took what was already on the ground, it’s not like we shook down the trees.”

She looked genuinely abashed as she added this last part, as if Jester might think poorly of her had it been any other way. Jester didn’t care one way or another. In fact, more than anything she felt unspeakably charmed at the thought of Yasha doing something as simple as picking apples for the fun of it.

“Why didn’t you shake the trees?” she asked. “Someone as big as you, I bet you could have shaken down _all_ the apples from any tree you wanted!”

“Maybe, but…then it would have felt like stealing. And stealing from people who couldn’t always afford that. Instead, we just picked up what would have rotted away anyway.”

“It is very good of you to think like that, Yasha!” No wonder Beau was so smitten.

“Thank you,” Yasha said. A thought seemed to strike her – she glanced over at Molly and grinned, before leaning a little closer to Jester. Jester felt her heart skip a beat at the idea that Yasha might be about to share some really special secret with her. “Do you know what crabapples are?”

“I think so. Or at least I had some candy that said it was made from them once.”

“So you know they’re _really_ sour?”

Jester nodded emphatically.

“One time we found a crabapple tree on this hill not too far from the road. And of course we went up to get some, but…Molly didn’t really know what he was in for.”

“Oh _no_.”

“I mean, I’ve had them before, I’ll just…” Yasha mimed tossing something right into her mouth, then pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle her laughter. “But that made him think that was a good idea for him to try as well.”

“Oh _no!_ Poor Molly!”

“I don’t think he stopped making faces for three days.”

Molly looked over at them from the cart, his attention finally caught by Jester’s shriek of laughter. She blew him a kiss and motioned for him to turn around. He rolled his eyes, but smiled and did so. Yasha looked over at her old friend, and her expression was so warm and so fond in that moment that Jester almost felt a little jealous. She hoped eventually Yasha would stay with them all long enough to start looking at the rest of the group like that, too.

“They’re…an acquired taste. You just maybe shouldn’t try to acquire it all at once.” Yasha turned her gaze back to the road, still smiling in contented reminiscence. “But crabapples aren’t my favorite. Those pink ones are. You know those, right?”

Jester nodded emphatically, finding herself enraptured despite all her expectations. “Those are really, really good.”

Yasha’s voice went distant in the way it sometimes did when she was watching the rain. “The ones that are pink like sunsets. And kissed by the rain, like a gift from the Stormlord.” She swallowed visibly and drew the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Did I make you hungry, Yasha?” Jester asked, grinning.

The taller women started, as if drawn out of her thoughts, then looked at Jester as if she’d briefly forgotten the other woman was there. Then Yasha chuckled, and she looked so human in that moment that Jester could have fallen in love just as hard as Beau had. “Maybe a little. If we pass by any orchards, want to help Molly and I pick some up?”

“Absolutely!”


	2. Fjord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I accidentally make Fjord the most Texan motherfucker ever, I suspect.

“Fjord? What is your favorite food?”

“Oh that’s easy,” Fjord said. They were sitting side by side next to the campfire, and he was fumbling with some needle and thread as he tried to fix up some holes in his cloak. “Back when I was a sailor--”

“You mean a seaman.”

“Sure, Jester. Back when I was a sailor, every time I got in from a long voyage, I’d always treat myself to some really good beefsteak at whatever establishment I could find that had it on offer.”

“Your favorite food is beef? I thought it would be fish.”

“Nah. I’ve had more than enough time to get sick of eating fish. You need to mix it up every now and then. Beef was how I kept myself able to stomach fish.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Jester couldn’t think of much else to say after that, so she stole some of Fjord’s thread and played string games with it until Fjord needed more. He turned out to have some difficulties rethreading the needle, however, since the light had faded further.

“Can you take a crack at this?” he asked, passing the sadly bereft needle over to her.

By then, Jester had thought of more she could say, so even as she took both needle and thread she said: “Only if you tell me more about the places you went to! Were they fancy?” She nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. “I always knew you were the fanciest guy in the group, Fjord.”

He chuckled, scratching the back of his head and looking away from her. Jester grinned and thought gleefully to herself that the Traveler  _should_  have given her a high five for making Fjord blush. Then again, maybe he thought that was too easy. He was probably right. “I don’t know about  _that_ , but…I guess they were nice enough. Sometimes there were actual cloths on the tables, so you didn’t have to see whatever mess the last five folks had left behind.”

“Wow. Now that you mention it, I really miss tablecloths.”

“I could’ve gotten used to ‘em, yeah. ‘Specially since I wasn’t always the neatest eater, myself. Usually take my steaks pretty bloody.”

Jester couldn’t help but pull a face. “Why is that?”

“That way the juices would soak into the other foods, like the vegetables and such. It’s like you get more steak for your gold, see?”

“I guess.” She wasn’t sure she did. Jester couldn’t remember ever eating a lot of meat before. She usually let Caleb and Nott pick the bacon off her plate whenever they stayed at an inn, or else contributed it to Beau's stash of pocket bacon.

Her skepticism must have shown in her voice, because out of the corner of her eye she could see that Fjord looked embarrassed again. It didn’t feel like any fun, this time.

“I guess it probably doesn’t sound like a lot,” her friend said. “But it was something to look forward to. Something for me. That’s important, I think – finding things to look forward to that are just for yourself. People can’t just get by living day to day. Crossing those little finish lines we set for ourselves and getting the reward on the other side…that’s how you keep life worth living, if you ask me.”

Jester tilted her head to sneak a peek at Fjord. His profile was limned in firelight, and he looked so soft and so happy with the thoughts of steak dinners and little rewards long past.

She hadn’t thought it was possible for him to get even more handsome, but that smile really did suit him very well. She wished she had her sketchbook to hand, instead of this newly threaded needle. That thought reminded her, at least, that she had rethreaded the needle while Fjord had been talking. Jester held it out to him.

“I did ask you!” she said, smiling when he looked at her. “And I am glad I did, because that makes a lot of sense and you sounded really smart just now, Fjord!”

“Well thank you, Jester. Nice of you to say.” Now Fjord was definitely blushing and Jester had to fight not to squeal in delight. Blushing really did look so much nicer if your skin was purple or blue or green.

“Now that I think of it,” the half-orc carried on. “I guess I never thought to ask you what your…”

“I’m gonna go get my sketchbook!” Jester declared, and darted off to rummage through her pack. Fjord didn’t ask again when she returned with it, for which she was grateful. It also seemed to her that he tried a little harder to sit still as she sketched him there at work, capturing this moment and their memories in charcoal and chiaroscuro.


	3. Mollymauk

“Molly? What is your favorite food?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to me!”

The two of them sat floating together in a bath, leaning side by side against the edge of the pool. The air was steamy and smelled nice. The rest of the group was supposed to be joining them later, but their last job had left them in such a filthy state that Jester had scarcely been able to stand waiting for the bathhouse to open this morning, and Molly had been right there with her.

So she’d left the others a note and she’d bought them some pastries from a little cart and the two of them had gotten here right as the place opened.

It was nice, sharing a bath with Mollymauk. He splashed her when she splashed him and he didn’t get weird about helping her wash her back the way Fjord or Caleb or Beau did. It was nice just being alone with a fellow tiefling, as well, and being able to pretend for just a little while that the world was made up entirely of people like them. No endless sea of humans acting like _she_ was the one who looked funny, just brilliant blue and lovely lavender and very fetching horns.

“Well, your patience has been rewarded!” Jester declared grandly, wringing out her cloth. “For I, Jester Lavore, am now prepared to ask you, Mollymauk Tealeaf, what your favorite food is!”

“You do me a great honor, my fair lady!” Molly declared just as grandly right back, grinning. He gave her a half bow before settling back again. “I don’t even know what it was called, to be honest, or if it even had a name.”

“Was it a pastry, or a fruit, or…”

“It was this stew? Usually had mutton in it, and almost more vegetables than broth. We’d make it after a particularly good show or a big payday. Celebrate the fact that we _could_ treat ourselves to the good stuff for a change.”

“You and the circus, you mean?”

“Yeah. Normally we all ate on our own time, handled our own cooking. Just how it works when practice schedules don’t always line up. But once Bo was ready to serve this up, that was it, no excuses. Time for everyone to get around the fire so we could eat together like one big, glitzy, fucked up family.”

“That sounds really nice.” Her throat felt tight and her stomach felt funny. Jester tried to swallow that feeling down, and tried to keep her hands busy by reaching for the small dish of rose oil by the side of the bath and upending it over her head, into her hair. She thought of Molly with the circus. He really had seemed happy there, even if all of that had been months ago by now. Was he just as happy with them?

“The problem,” Molly said, carrying on while Jester scrubbed the oil into her hair and waited for it to be safe to open her eyes: “Was that apparently to make it taste the best, you had to let it cook overnight. Which meant that around about three in the morning, the smell would be enough to drive you crazy and it’d still be about six hours from done.”

Jester giggled, and seized on this new and fun thought for the sake of leaving those old and sad ones behind. “Oh _no!_ What did you do?”

“What do you think? Try my damndest to steal a spoonful, of course. Just to tide me over until morning.”

“All by yourself? I remember the other Bo and he was a pretty big guy.”

“That he was. And pretty fierce with a wooden ladle in his hand. Which was why I’d usually team up with Toya.”

“Did she sing to distract him, like she did with us?”

“It was more a case of that even if he was a big guy, Bo couldn’t be in two places at once. One of us would usually get a mouthful, even if we both got a whack for it.”

Jester laughed. She couldn’t help it. The mental image of Molly – ornate, fancy, over-the-top Mollymauk – teaming  up with that strange little dwarf girl all for the grand crusade of stealing some stew was too funny. Thankfully, Molly laughed with her, and the memory looked like it was filling him up with warmth inside, just like the bath.

But only for a moment, though. Then that moment was gone and he looked…wistful and a little sad and Jester’s heart hurt for him even if she didn’t understand why. “Don’t suppose I’ll ever have that stew again,” he murmured. “Somehow, I…never really thought about that until just now.”

Jester reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “You could teach Fjord how to make it! I could help!”

He didn’t meet her gaze. But he held her hand for a moment in an apparent sign of gratitude, before he let his hand fall back into the water. “That’s good of you to offer, Jester, but…no. Even if I did, I don’t think it’d ever taste the same.” Molly shook his head like he was trying to shake cobwebs off his horns. “And that’s fine.” It didn’t sound like it was fine. “I’d rather keep it just in my memories, if that’s the case. Maybe one day I’ll find something else just as good.” He didn’t sound hopeful, though.

They sat in silence for a few moments more, until that silence became thicker than the steam that curled around them and Jester couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Do you want me to wash your hair?” she asked. “I think there’s still some of the stuff that smells like lilies.”

“That sounds nice, actually. Thanks.”

He sat on the next step down from her, and Jester spent a little while working sweet smelling oils into his hair, rubbing her fingers over his scalp in a way that made Mollymauk purr. She wished she could do more, in that moment, but she was glad she could do something.


	4. Beauregard

“So my favorite food…” Beau began, as they wandered the market together.

“I didn’t ask,” Jester said, shading her eyes and gazing down the road ahead.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Beau slump a little. “Oh. I mean, I just heard Fjord and Molly talking, and I just thought…”

Jester managed to keep her composure for five seconds more, before she burst out laughing and clapped Beau heavily on the back. “I’m just kidding! Of course I was _going_ to ask. I just didn’t think you would ask me first!”

She looked over at Beau and smiled. Beau smiled back, looking relieved. “Yeah, well, like I said – heard Fjord and Molly talking, kinda wanted to get in on the fun.”

“Beauregard, what is your favorite food?”

“You ever had pickled cabbage?”

Jester’s opinion of the words “pickled cabbage” must have shown on her face, because now it was Beau’s turn to laugh.

“Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound that great. But let me tell you, it _is_. Really super refreshing, especially after a long workout.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s like…I don’t know how to describe it. Brisk? Yeah, that works. Goes great with pretty much anything, too. Never a bad time for pickled cabbage! Shame it takes _forever_ to actually make.”

“Why is that?”

“Hell if I know. But apparently to get it just right, you gotta bury it underground. For _days_.”

“ _Days?_ You work out way more often than that!”

“I _know_ , right? So you need to think ahead. Which I’m, y’know, really not that great at. I used to have to tell my, uh, my parents to bury it somewhere I didn’t know about. Otherwise I’d keep digging it up to check in on it. Can’t help it if digging it up’s one of the best parts, though.”

“Oh! Like digging for buried treasure!”

“Yeah!” Beau looked so delighted that Jester understood that she slung an arm around the tiefling’s shoulders, companionable as anything. “Like digging for delicious buried treasure. Except, uh, sometimes it wasn’t done yet. It’s still just be regular old boring cabbage. So I’d have to put it back.”

“But then you got to dig it up again later!”

“It’s just really nice to get some dirt under your nails sometimes, y’know?”

Jester most certainly did not know that feeling, but she nodded anyway, because Beau looked like she was enjoying herself now and had enjoyed herself then. Beau didn’t often look like she had fun with anything besides punching people in the face, and while that was a good and useful hobby, she could probably still stand to diversify.

“Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Beau carried on. “But I’m not exactly the greatest cook.”

She really wasn’t, but Jester was resolved to keep trying to be supportive. “You're better than Nott.”

“I literally once saw Nott eat a dead rat off the floor. It’s okay, you don’t have to be nice. At least not like that, because it doesn’t work so good.”

“Sorry.”

“But I can make pickled cabbage! You only need to add, like, a little bit to the jar to make it super tasty. Even I can’t fuck it up. It feels good to feel like you’re taking care of yourself, y’know? Sure you do. You took care of yourself all the time when you were a kid, right?”

Jester’s first thought was that no, she hadn’t – not like the way Caleb and Fjord and Nott and maybe Beau had, too. But then she thought again. Hadn’t she felt so proud of herself the first time she’d sneaked off to buy her own breakfast without troubling her mother about it? Or the time she’d listened quietly at the door and memorized all her mother’s songs all by herself? It did feel good to do things for yourself, by yourself.

Furthermore, even if she hadn’t had as many opportunities to learn before, they’d come in abundance over the past few months. She could stitch up her own clothes and handle the horses and even fix a broken cart wheel. She could also bash bad people in the head and fix her friends. The Traveler had been the one to give her some of these gifts, but she’d also improved on them herself, right?

“Right!” Jester said, nodding emphatically in answer to Beau’s question and her own. It felt good to do things for yourself. She wouldn’t have traded that for all the soft pillows in the world, even if she still wished she could have the soft pillows without having to trade anything.

Beau laughed, apparently happy just to be understood, and squeezed Jester's shoulders. Jester giggled and leaned a little against her friend, feeling happy to understand as they walked together through the crowds in the late afternoon sun.

“Besides,” Beau carried on. “It makes me feel better when I eat it. The only point of food is to make you feel better. Otherwise, what’s the point of eating?”

Jester nodded her agreement, though she suspected she and Beau had very different interpretations of what it meant to feel better from food. “It’s just a shame we’re hardly ever anywhere long enough to make pickles. Maybe we could bury some and come back, like, next year! Then they would be extra super pickly. The greatest of pickles.”

Beau laughed, and then looked thoughtful. “I dunno. I’d be down for giving that a try.”

“We'd have to remember where we buried them, though. Oh! I could draw us a map. Like a treasure map.”

“Huh. You know, I bet you could.” Now Beau was looking even more thoughtful, like she was actually making a plan in that way Beau was surprisingly good at doing sometimes. “You know what? Hell with it. Cabbage is cheap. Let’s pick some up on the way back.”

“Okay!”

“And this time next year, I’ll dig ‘em up and share ‘em out. Old pickle recipe for new friends. Although…I guess you guys would be kind of old friends by then, huh?” She genuinely looked as though she’d never considered that before, and Jester couldn’t help but boggle a little.

“I thought we were old friends now! We got through a whole _winter_ together, Beau.”

“…maybe.” Beau smiled wryly. “I try not to get ahead of myself.”

“You might try, but you’re really bad at it.”

Beau flicked Jester on one of her horns. “Fuck you, too.” They both laughed, and carried on walking for a few moments more before something seemed to occur to the monk, something far more sobering.

“…I hope we’re actually all still alive next year to see what the greatest pickle tastes like, y’know?”

“Oh, do not even worry about that.” Jester patted Beau’s hand and screwed her own resolve a little tighter in her heart. “We will be. I will make certain of it.”

“I mean, Molly’s always bleeding himself. Nott’s always going on ahead. Who knows what the fuck Yasha is even doing on her own. Caleb is…Caleb. Kind of a miracle we made it this far.”

“We are miraculous people!” Jester spread her hands grandly and twirled to encompass the world, all of them, and the grace of the Traveler. “And we are guided by a miraculous hand. Do not even worry, Beau. I will keep us safe, and I will help you find your pickles again.”

It was not exactly a typical promise to make, perhaps, but Jester could scarcely remember ever meaning any words more than she did right then and there. She let herself believe that Beau seemed reassured, too, as they carried on to the blacksmith together.


	5. Caleb

“Caleb?” Jester asked, sidling up next to him where he sat in a corner of the tavern. “What…”

“Bread,” Caleb said, without looking up from his book.

Jester felt brought up short, and frowned at the side of his head. “What?”

“My favorite food,” Caleb said, and turned a page. “It is bread. There you go.”

“I meant your favorite food to _eat_ , not your favorite food to use as mittens!”

“Bread is good for both.”

“You mean that if you could pick any food to eat every day for the rest of your life forever, you would pick _bread_?” Jester knew she sounded offended, but she also knew that Caleb _had_ to be making fun of her.

Except then, like a gift from the Traveler, she heard the pages of his book rustle and her gaze darted down to see that Caleb’s knuckles had gone white where he was suddenly holding it very tightly. She realized he was upset, she was upsetting him. Jester suddenly flashed back to the first time they’d visited the Pillow Trove together and things had suddenly gone so wrong and she hadn’t realized how or why until too late.

She realized how and why now, however. Caleb was her friend. Even if you didn’t understand the things that were important to your friends, they had to be important to you, too.

Jester stopped leaning over his shoulder. She settled herself down on the bench next to him instead, folding her hands in her lap, looking like she was the picture of the attentive and thoughtful student, or so Jester hoped it would seem to him. “Is it a special kind of bread?” she asked.

Caleb sighed, and though he sounded annoyed, he also stopped holding his book quite so tightly. “No,” he said. “But it is, er, a sort that doesn’t seem to have caught on in this part of the Empire.”

“So there _are_ different kinds of bread?”

“Oh, _ja_ , yes. Dozens. Maybe hundreds of them. At least in Zemni.”

“Hundreds?! Really?!” Now Jester wasn’t even having to feign her curiosity. Hundreds of different types of bread! She’d known the world was big and vast and wonderful but she never could have dreamed it was big enough for something like this. “Tell me about them!”

And, to her delight, Caleb did so. She only realized then that she’d never really heard him talk about his home in the Zemni Fields. It was, like the name implied, a big and flat place that got a lot of sun and a lot of rain. Mostly the farmers grew wheat and barley and rye and raised sheep and goats that grazed on any of the grass left over.

Caleb’s favorite type of bread, as it turned out, was made entirely with rye rather than the wheat breads Jester was familiar with. _Schwarzbrot_ , as it was apparently known in Zemni, was dark and dense as cake while also, he assured her, tasting nothing like cake. Rye was hardier than wheat, could grow even in winter, so you could still have fresh loaves even with snow on the ground. But rye was also thought of as a poor man’s grain in most other places. So while the Empire took most of its taxes in wheat, Zemni was left with most of its rye stocks to do with as it liked.

Caleb spoke of eating black bread with cheese or pickled fish for breakfast every morning with his family, and it sounded like a life Jester could never dream of. _Did she ever read you stories?_ Caleb had asked her once about her mother. _Or do other things parents do?_ Even if he’d never had children it seemed as if he really did know what parents were supposed to do and she didn’t know how to feel about that. It was probably okay if she felt a little jealous.

“We grew pumpkins behind the house,” he said, his voice soft and wistful. By then he’d closed the book in his lap and had his chin resting in one hand, staring at nothing very much. “We saved the seeds for winter so we could bake them into the bread. Something to look forward to, in the cold.”

She wondered what had happened to lead Caleb here instead. She knew better than to ask.

“If we ever find a bakery with bread like that,” she said instead. “I will buy it for you, Caleb! No matter how much money it is. Or else I will help Nott steal you some.”

“Thank you, Jester. That is kind of you to offer.” He didn’t look hopeful but he did look grateful and that was enough for her for now.


	6. Nott

“Nott? What is your favorite food?”

“Food.”

Caleb was spending an hour transforming Frumpkin, and Nott had cleared the room until the smell of expensive incense and charcoal smoke had faded. In exchange for waiting it out in Beau and Jester’s room, she’d consented to let Jester try and figure out if it was even possible to braid the tangled nest of black wire that Nott the Brave called hair.

Jester sighed as she tried to work out yet another snarl. “That is not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. I don’t _have_ a favorite food. Caleb and I don’t go in for things like that. We didn’t have time to think about what food we might _prefer_. Just _getting_ enough of it used to be hard enough.”

“Caleb’s favorite food is black bread with pumpkin seeds.”

She _felt_ the sudden tension that took hold of her friend then, and Nott was quiet for several minutes, not even wincing as Jester worked at her hair. Finally, Jester asked, as gently as she could: “You didn’t know that?”

“No.” Nott squirmed a little where she sat. “I thought if bread was black it meant humans couldn’t eat it anymore.”

“You know, so did I! But apparently in Zemni they sometimes make it like that on purpose. And put pumpkin seeds in it so it tastes better. It’s called Shorts Brat.” She didn’t mention anything else Caleb had told her – about his parents, about the winters, about the garden behind the little house he’d grown up in. Even Jester could see that those were…private words. He would probably tell them all to Nott if she asked, but the important part was that it would be Nott asking.

The little goblin was still radiating an aura of tense unhappiness. Jester felt like she could make a reasonable guess as to why. “It’s okay that you didn’t know before. Now you do! Like a mother should. And if we ever find a bakery that sells bread like that, I promise, I will help you steal some for him.”

Nott glanced back at Jester the best she could when Jester still had two hands on her head. “Thank you, Jester.” And then she smiled, and looked like she meant it.

Nott’s hair was really pretty soft once you got the clumps out. Nott herself sat patiently, until Jester had successfully teased out three little braids tied off with three different colors of ribbon.

“You know,” said the goblin. “There was this…this _cake_ , once. A couple of days after Caleb and I first broke out of prison.”

“Cake is a great way to celebrate breaking out of jail, if you ask me.”

 “It wasn’t just normal cake, though. There was _booze_ in it.” Nott audibly swallowed back drool. “We didn’t have anything when we first broke out. They even took my flask. I was getting…oh, it was worse than the itch. I was getting _sober_. I hadn’t been sober in _years_. It felt like there were spiders crawling all over me, all the time!” She shuddered viscerally, and Jester patted her shoulder sympathetically. “I thought I was going to _die_. And it got even worse when Caleb disappeared on me!”

Jester gasped, pressing a hand to her chest in horror. “Caleb _left_ you like that?” She could scarcely believe it, wondered if Nott was merely remembering a hallucination.

Nott shook her head, then batted Jester’s hands away so that she could turn around and face the tiefling properly. Jester’s heart felt so warm then and she couldn’t help but smile to see that Nott was smiling, too, and her yellow eyes were so bright at the memory she was relaying.

“But he came back! And he had this cake with him! And I ate it and I felt better because there was alcohol in it! Can you imagine, Jester? Can you imagine being a goblin and discovering that there are people in this world who are so well off that they think of ways to get their beer besides _drinking_ it?” She cackled in delight, wrapping her hands around her stomach. “I thought to myself then that I wanted to be that well off one day! I wanted us both to be the kinds of people who could afford to get fancy with their food, just for fun!”

Nott folded her arms and nodded decisively. “And when I felt better I stole us some money and we had our first real food in three days! Sitting in a tavern and everything! And then Caleb was strong enough to turn copper into silver again! And thus, the Money Pot was born! All because of cake with booze in it. _That_ , Jester, is my favorite food. That cake changed my life!”

Jester was so overcome that she hugged Nott to her. Nott immediately started to struggle and flail, hissing like a cat, and Jester let her go after a few seconds. “And it changed my life, too!” Jester declared grandly as if nothing had happened just then. “Because in a way, it brought you both to us!”

Nott looked surprisingly thoughtful, at that. “I guess it did. Pastries really are sort of amazing, aren’t they? I guess I can see why you like them so much, now. Is that why they’re your favorite food?”

“O-Oh, ah…”

To hell with it. She’d dodged this question five times. Nott had clearly worked very hard to give Jester an answer – perhaps the sixth time should not be the charm.

Even so, Jester leaned forward to whisper her reply to Nott. “Pastries aren’t really my favorite food.”

“They’re _not_?!” Nott squawked, loud enough that she wouldn’t have been surprised had Caleb heard it in the next room. Jester winced and motioned for Nott to quiet down. Nott did so, but still went to work fanning herself as if she had grown physically faint. “I…I don’t know what to think anymore. Is Jester even your real name? Are you really Jester? Who are you?!”

“Of _course_ I am really Jester!” She folded her arms and let out a huff, looking away and feeling embarrassed, even more than she’d expected to. “But…but pastries aren’t my _favorite!_ I don’t have special pastry memories the way you and everybody else does! They’re just the things I eat! This things I have _always_ eaten! Ever since I was little and could have anything I wanted but I never knew what was out there to want! And even now I do not know where to _start!_ ”

She barely recognized the sound of her own voice – tight and frustrated and petulant and young as a child and old as her mother at the same time.  Jester thumped her fist against the floor in a vain attempt to vent her feelings and kept her gaze stubbornly averted from Nott’s in a useless attempt to hide the upset tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

Nott sat silently for a long time, but Jester could feel the little goblin’s gaze on her face, and she felt it when Nott reached out and patted Jester’s hand, awkwardly but obviously sincere.

“It’s not like you’re suddenly not a whole person,” said Nott quietly. “I didn’t have a favorite food either, until five minutes ago.”

“Yes you did. You just didn’t know it! But I’ve thought about this for a really long time and I _don’t_.”

“That’s still okay. You’re…you’re talking like your life is over, Jester. And it’s not, it’s really not. You’re not an old woman, you’re not _missing out_. You’re not suddenly not a real person just because you don’t have a favorite food. Food is just that. It doesn’t _have_ to mean anything. You seem like someone who finds meaning in a lot of things and to be honest, that’s always kind of confused me…but it’s always seemed to make you happy and so I like that about you.”

That was enough to give Jester the courage to look over at her friend again, and to even return the hesitant smile Nott offered her.

“I’m not going to say you have a long life ahead of you,” Nott continued, her ears perking up slightly. “Because to be honest, you might not. None of us can say that. But that means it’s even more important that you don’t make it shorter for yourself. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jester said, and she felt herself starting to cry again, but this time it was for a wholly better reason.

This time, Nott let Jester hug her for five full seconds before she wriggled away, but even then she let Jester finish braiding her hair and tying it off in ribbons of many colors.


	7. Jester

Everybody was having a really bad day.

They’d made it as far as the woods, and considering that there was a vast stretch of open green between the woods and the castle, that had been far from a sure thing. Now the Mighty Nein was scattered around amidst the trees, catching their breath, quietly panicking in their own little ways.

Caleb had his back against Molly’s chest and Molly had his arms around Caleb as the two of them talked quietly at the base of one tree. Yasha and Beau were sitting slumped against each other beneath another tree, not talking at all, just holding hands tightly as Yasha occasionally pressed a kiss to Beau’s hair. Nott was bent over her crossbow, making hasty repairs, repairs that were punctuated by low, vehement cursing because her fingers were shaking too badly.

Fjord was at the furthest edge of their makeshift camp, where the castle was still visible in the distance. All was quiet for now, but you never quite knew with wizards – especially wizards that already had pet demons. Just one look at that thing and suddenly everyone had been ready to run.

Jester really wanted to go and stand watch with him, or even take over so he could have a break, but the Traveler was talking to her right now, answering some questions she’d had for months.

“So you think now is a good time?” she whispered to him. The two of them were huddled behind a tree opposite Caleb and Molly, whispering to each other so as not to disturb or distract anyone else.

 _Judging by the state of your friends, I would say that now is the perfect time_ , said the Traveler, nodding, seeming as serious as he ever was.

“Okay. Thank you for finally telling me how to do this spell.”

 _I should thank you for finally being strong enough to do it._ Despite the solemnity of the situation, his green eyes sparkled with warmth for her. He took her hand, kissed it, and then vanished. Feeling braver already, feeling like she could punch that demon out if it came snooping around here, Jester got to her feet and stepped out from behind the tree to survey her friends.

Everybody was having a very bad day.

She knew how she just might make it better.

So she offered Fjord an apologetic smile, then stood up straight, took a deep breath, and shouted for all the team to hear: _“Everybody listen to me!”_

She got everyone’s attention in a hurry, after that, even if Nott dropped one of her springs into the grass and Beau flinched so badly that she fell across Yasha’s lap.

“You have our attention, Jester,” said Caleb cautiously. Behind her, Jester heard Fjord approaching as well.

“I know we are all having a really bad day,” Jester said, looking around at all her friends. They all looked tired and scared, worse than she’d seen them in such a long time, since the days when they weren’t even sure the group would make it this far. “That wizard was a lot stronger than we thought he would be and those demons were really scary and I know everything seems really hard right now. And do you know what’s even worse? We haven’t eaten anything pretty much all day!”

“I mean, things were moving pretty fast,” Beau grumbled. “There wasn’t a lot of time.”

“I _am_ pretty hungry, though,” said Nott, a little hesitantly.

“Right! And so am I.” Now that someone had caught on to where she was going with this, Jester pulled off her haversack and started to rummage around inside. “And everything always looks worse when you’re hungry. So do you know what we need?” Her prize was proving surprisingly hard to retrieve. Jester stuck her arm in the bag up to her elbow. “We… _I_ need to pack this better, hold on just a minute…aha!” With a flourish, she pulled a brilliantly jeweled bowl from the bag and held it up for them all to see. “We need a _feast!_ ”

“That’s a bowl,” said Yasha, tilting her head to regard it thoughtfully.

“I know _that_ , but it’s gonna be a feast in just a minute.” Or at least, she hoped it would. Now was absolutely the perfect time for this spell, but it was also the first time she’d ever cast it, and she really hoped she would do it right so as not to spoil this really great moment.

She shooed them all back to the very edge of the little clearing, just in case, then set the bowl down on the ground in the newly opened space. “Okay, okay, okay…” Jester said, rubbing her hands together. How had that prayer gone again?

The Traveler obligingly murmured a reminder in her ear. Jester brightened up immediately. “Right!”

She pulled out her holy symbol, closed her eyes, and said the words, just as he’d taught her. Then she heard the sound of something shattering, and she heard the others gasp.

Jester opened her eyes just in time to see the bowl had broken into bright, glimmering dust that floated freely in the space for a moment before coalescing into the shape of a large table with seven chairs and _something_ piled high on top of it.

Then, with a faint _whoosh_ of displaced air, it all became properly visible, properly real – seven delicate and well cushioned chairs circled around a large table set with a pink tablecloth, and upon that table were masses upon masses of food.

“Everybody dig in!” Jester declared, offering a grand bow to them all. Then, when they all still looked a little gobsmacked, a little uncertain, she pulled out a chair for herself, sat down, and grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which turned out to be a slice of dense, dark bread. One bite had Jester making a face. “ _Wow_ , Caleb, you weren’t kidding, this isn’t like cake at all.”

That seemed to decide the matter, and the rest of the Mighty Nein descended on the feast with a will. Jester found herself seated between Molly and Fjord, and for a few seconds, there was only the sound of rustling and chewing as everyone grabbed _something_ – be it a piece of fruit, a hunk of cheese, or a drumstick off a roast chicken – to try a few bites and confirm for themselves that it was real.

Once they did, it was like a damn breaking.

“Oh my god, Jester, this is _so good_.”

“We can always count on you to pull out a miracle.”

“Thank you, Jester, this is wonderful.”

Jester felt her face starting to get warm with the genuinely effusive, emphatically grateful praise everyone was heaping on her, so it was actually a minor mercy when everyone discovered what else was waiting for them amidst the masses of other food.

“Beau, you weren’t kidding, this pickled cabbage is something else.”

“Right? I missed this. And of _course_ you like cake with booze in it, Nott. Got kind of a punch, actually.”

“We could all stand to be a little bit drunk. I thought all apples were the same, Yasha, but these are really very nice.”

“They’re not even in season right now. This is wonderful. Molly, have you had the stew?”

“I might just eat my weight in it. Ah, just like I remember! Goes quite well with the bread, Caleb.”

“There are even pumpkin seeds in it…”

And as everyone ate and laughed and reminisced, Jester found that she was nevertheless not forgotten. Someone always made sure that her plate was never empty, offering her some of their favorite to try. She found that, despite her early hesitations, everything at least had something to recommend it, especially when eaten one after the other, especially when the flavors were allowed to mingle into a surprisingly delicious meal.

She decided then, as she feasted with her friends, to be selfish. Jester would not be content to have one favorite food. She would start with six, and work her way up from there.

After an hour, everyone had picked the table just about clean, and the remnants, along with the table and chairs, faded in a flash of soft pink light, depositing the Mighty Nein back onto the grass. Beau stretched, long and luxuriant, then patted her stomach. “Damn, I’m stuffed. I’m thinking we have a nice nap, then go give that asshole in the castle what for.”

“I was thinking back over our previous attempt while we ate,” Caleb said, looking bright and alert as if his earlier fear had never taken hold of him. When he smiled, the expression was almost fierce. “I may have some new ideas.”

“We might not have long to hear ‘em.” Fjord had gotten to his feet and was staring back towards the castle. Jester got up to stand beside him. If she shaded her eyes and squinted, she could just make out a dark shape, winging its way from the castle and towards the woods. “Good timing on the spell, Jester. We might have another fight on our hands.”

As it drew nearer, Jester could hear the others getting up, getting ready, and she could see that this was indeed the same demon that had sent them fleeing from the castle just a few hours ago. It was hard to remember why it had seemed so terrifying now. Here in the bright light of day, with a full stomach and her friends at her back, it didn’t seem like something to be afraid of at all.

Nott stepped up beside Jester and took aim with her newly loaded crossbow, tracking the oncoming foe with a keen eye and steady hands. “Let’s give _it_ something to be afraid of,” she said with feeling, and fired the second it was in range.


End file.
